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Via Tom Ricks -- whose new blog at Foreign Policy is excellent, by the way -- comes this analysis of Hamas from the notorious anti-Semites at The Army War College:
"HAMAS' political and strategic development has been both ignored and misreported in Israeli and Western sources which villainize the group, much as the PLO was once characterized as an anti-Semitic terrorist group...Negotiating solely with the weaker Palestinian party-Fatah-cannot deliver the security Israel requires. . . . The underlying strategies of Israel and HAMAS appear mutually exclusive . . . . Yet each side is still capable of revising its desired endstate and of necessary concessions to establish and preserve a long-term truce, or even a longer-term peace...Israel and the United States need to abandon their policies of non-negotiation and non-communication with HAMAS."How you approach the Israel-Palestine conflict has a lot to do with how you understand Hamas. Assuming them an irrational terrorist organization bent on Israel's destruction militates toward a set of policies that eradicates the organization, or comes as close as possible. Assuming them a violent liberation movement in transition, with recognizable goals and rational leadership, suggests a set of policies that include yoking them to the responsibilities of governance and opening potentially constructive lines of communication and negotiation. The Army War College is suggesting the latter interpretation, which is also the interpretation that's best for Israeli interests and long-term stability. But they're probably only doing that because they hate Jews and love moral equivalence.
